F-Droid

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Posted on Apr 04, 2024 by linsui

TWIF generated on Thursday, 04 Apr 2024, Week 14

F-Droid core

Client development marches on in many areas, while targetsdk upgrades might be an ever constant change we have to deal with, other more fun areas are tackled also, like theming (soon more šŸ˜œ) or repository management. 1.19 brought a new workflow for adding a repository or its mirrors, and now, the already released F-Droid Client and F-Droid Basic 1.20.0-alpha0 are reworking the way repositories are presented in whole, from a simple way to reorder them to adding a per-app selector to mark as favorite a certain repository.

The eager developer already spilled the beans in a Fedi post with pics and videos to see it all in action. As usual, we encourage supporters to try out the new app (expand Versions and install, or enable beta updates in upper right menu) and to provide feedback.

Another thing that will have future impact, ā€œCustom Anti-Features are now enabled by defaultā€. Meaning that repositories that add their own anti-features will have their apps shown instead of them being hidden initially. Also contributors are working towards splitting NonFreeNet into TetheredNet so that apps that depend on self-hostable FOSS servers donā€™t get flagged in the same way, and this is a first step. Since this setting is enabled on a fresh install only and as a general advice, even if you are not going to test the newest alpha, you can enable this anti-feature now in Settings so when TetheredNet is added, apps donā€™t mysteriously disappear. We will announce this again as we get closer and as needed.

The news above is about the latest Client, but many users are still on older Android versions, and while Licaon_Kterā€™s rant last week might have not reached many eyes as it was hidden in news about XMPP clients, those users are currently seeing their other apps stop connecting to many websites, yes even F-Droid to itā€™s own repository or Fedilab to the Fediverse servers. Why? Because Letā€™s Encrypt (the certificate authority), who made possible for more and more websites to use their free certificates, did some changes in 2020 and Android 7 and older devices are not able to use those new certificates. Weā€™ve updated our Running on old Android versions page to guide you on how to add the intermediary certificate and fix this for the whole device.

In website news, the locale fix is still an ongoing battle, but we made the website layout leaner on the package pages to highlight the app that is featured, without distractions. More changes are planned.

Community News

Back in January we welcomed a new video editor, this week another one joins in, Bunny Media Editor, Media editor: edit images and videos on your phone.

Secreto is now known as Sekreto, so if youā€™ve installed it under the old name, please uninstall it and reinstall.

Removed Apps

2 apps were removed
  • CineLog got all its versions disabled as it depends on a non-FOSS library. (upstream issue)
  • condense press news stopped working and it was archived. (#3225)

Newly Added Apps

10 more apps were newly added

Updated Apps

206 more apps were updated

Thank you for reading this weekā€™s TWIF šŸ™‚

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